Have you ever wondered why a specific product on an e-commerce marketplace, like Noon.com, keeps popping up whenever you search for a particular term? Or why does a product listing outperform other listings and get more sales? That’s where product listing optimization comes into play.
Whether you sell through your e-commerce website or a marketplace, the competition can feel overwhelming. The way you convert your potential customers highly depends on how your product listings are optimized for the search engine or the specific sales channel.
The e-commerce market is fiercely competitive, with numerous products vying for attention to drive better sales. While online shopping trends are booming everywhere, it’s crucial for sellers to optimize their product listings so they don’t get lost among similar products.
This blog post will help you understand the importance of optimizing product listings and how to create great product listings that perform better.
Why should I consider optimizing product listings?
You can have the best product line for shoppers and the best deals for them, but if your product listing is not optimized, you won’t be able to display your high-quality products to the targeted audience. When selling on an e-commerce marketplace, you’re not done just by listing your products on the platform. Since these marketplaces operate in a highly competitive environment, sellers must put extra effort into being easily discovered by potential shoppers. Poorly created product listings can make even the highest-quality product look worthless to search engines, marketplaces, and the audience.
Product listing optimization is the process of aligning your product with the search intent of the right searcher or potential buyer and providing them with all the necessary information about your product. It may include creating a catchy product title, a concise product description, images, reviews, etc., among other elements that accurately showcase your product. The rising popularity of e-commerce marketplaces like DeliverIt, Amazon, and Noon in the UAE has made product listing optimization more crucial than ever. If you want your e-commerce business to thrive, you should do more than just create generic product listings.
Product Listing Optimization helps your product get more views, clicks, and conversions. It is the process of optimizing your product page for the sales channel you’re selling on, so you can stand out from the competition. Whether you are a startup or a small or medium-sized business operating within the UAE, the PLO allows you to compete on massive marketplaces like Noon.com, Amazon.ae, etc., and improves your brand visibility.
Optimizing your product listings also benefits your e-commerce business on search engines and ensures brand consistency across all channels. Optimized listings make your brand appear more professional, win the trust of potential shoppers, and improve your sales.
Impact of PLO for search and discovery
Your target audience is sometimes not aware of exactly what they want. While SEO plays a crucial role when a person searches for a specific keyword, there is much more to consider when optimizing product listings for an e-commerce marketplace. To get your product ranked in a sales channel, you must satisfy the search intent of both browsers and active shoppers.
This is where two vital tactics of product listing optimization come into play, i.e., search and discovery. And a well-optimized product listing is a balance of these two.
Optimizing your product listing for search means that customers who are intentionally searching for a specific product should be able to find your product on any channel or marketplace they use for buying. For example, if a person is looking for a ‘3-tier, rotating glass cake stand,’ they will most likely use these keywords to find the product in the marketplace quickly. And if your cake stand has these features and is optimized for the sales channel, it may appear at the top, making it easy for shoppers to find.
Let’s consider another vital aspect, i.e., optimizing your product listing for discovery. Suppose a person wants a cake stand but doesn’t know exactly what features they want. While searching, he discovers different options for cake stands, including their material, number of tiers, shape, weight capacity, and rotating mechanism. He further narrows down his search until he finds a cake stand that exactly meets his needs.
In this case, the seller optimizes their listing so that their cake stand appears when the searcher, with a vague idea of what type of cake stand they want, searches for it. By optimizing your product listing for discovery, the browser learns about your product for the first time and eventually becomes a shopper.
Tips to optimize product listing
Whether you sell through your e-commerce website or via an e-commerce marketplace, the product optimization and presentation are the core aspects that sales channels and buyers will perceive about the product, respectively. When selling on e-commerce marketplaces, you must also focus on understanding the specialized algorithms these online marketplaces follow. Since your product is in the middle of a chaotic product lineup, you must be more aware of how the market’s internal ranking system works to get your products ahead of the competition.
Let’s learn how to build a successful listing that makes your product stand out in the e-commerce landscape.
Understand the marketplace algorithm
Every marketplace may work slightly differently and prioritize different aspects for ranking products. A product may be ranked based on its sales history, use of targeted keywords, number of reviews and ratings, relevancy, recency, comprehensiveness of the listing, and other factors. Whether it’s Amazon’s A9 algorithm, eBay’s Cassini, or Etsy’s algorithm, these algorithms rank products based on specific rules, and sellers must understand the ranking approach used by the particular marketplace they’re using.
Although no single approach is guaranteed to increase sales, you can get down to the nitty-gritty of the specific algorithm used by the marketplace you’re using to make your product listings truly stand out. By creating product listings that meet the algorithm’s requirements, you can reach the right audience and encourage them to buy from you. Another perk of following the algorithmic rules is that your organic reach is improved and your dependency on paid advertising is reduced. When the seller meets the marketplace standards, they can easily get their products discovered by potential shoppers.
Never mind a thorough competitor analysis
To understand and do well, you must review the product listings of other sellers in the online marketplace to see how they cater to consumers.
You should check the listings of similar products. For example, if you’re selling microwaves, you must see microwave product listings on the marketplace. Moreover, it’s also helpful to look at other types of product listings with distinctive specifications from your own, because they may highlight some points that you might miss. Conducting a comprehensive competitor’s product listings analysis helps you assess the quality of your competitors’ listings and create listings that meet the needs of your audience within the competitive landscape.
Moreover, it also helps you discover the keywords and phrases your competitors are using, customer perceptions about their products, and highlights your advantages over them. These insights help you enhance the profile of your target consumers, further enabling you to tailor relevant listings. Analyzing your competitors’ product listings helps you identify the gaps you can fill to build a successful listing.
Create a catchy, informative, and intriguing product title
They say, ‘The more attractive the product title, the more sales it will generate.’ The comprehensiveness and attractiveness of a product title are directly proportional to the number of consumers it will attract, and that is why it is essential to have a compelling product title if you want your listing to perform well.
The product title on an e-commerce marketplace or site is like a digital sign that indicates what the product is. If the targeted buyers do not resonate with it or find it irrelevant or confusing, they will skip the product and continue scrolling through the marketplace.
The product title is a great place to add targeted keywords and provide the necessary information that buyers might need to know, and attract them. An optimized product title enhances your product’s searchability on the marketplace and makes it appear to the targeted customers.
This is how you can create a well-constructed product title:
- Strategically add the primary and relevant keywords into the product title to tell the marketplace algorithm about your product and help it map your product with its search query. You can incorporate long-tail keywords to beat the competition and laser targeting. For example, instead of creating a title as ‘Baby Backpack’, as it may have high competition, consider ‘Travel Tote – Multi-functional – Water Resistant Diaper Backpack’. This specific product title contains keywords that potential buyers might search for; hence, the chances of your product appearing at the top will increase.
- Add the product title or the targeted keyword in your product URL as well. Instead of product/rose123, a URL like product/red-rose-for-her scores better on SEO.
- You must highlight what makes your product unique by adding its unique selling proposition in the product title. This helps the marketplace identify your products’ distinctive features and gives you an edge over the competition. For instance, if you are selling flowers on the DeliverIt marketplace, you may create a descriptive product title highlighting its USP as ‘6-Piece Preserved Rose in a Heart Shape Box’. Doing so differentiates your flower business from the others on the marketplace.
- Since every marketplace has specific formatting guidelines for creating product titles, you should be mindful of these guidelines and restrict your title to the specified character limit. If your title exceeds the specified limit, it will be displayed until the accepted limit, and the rest of the characters will be omitted.
- If necessary, add value, number, dimension, series, size, model, etc. For example, 1 dozen plastic spoons, 5-pack cotton bags, 100ml water bottle, 64GB USB flash drive, 75-inch Smart LED, etc. This will give consumers a clear idea of your product and help them make decisions.
Craft a thoughtful and engaging product description
Another very important part of the product listing where you need to be considerate is the product description. A well-written product description not only gets better visibility, but also guides potential customers like a salesperson and helps convert them.
When creating product descriptions, include primary, relevant, and emerging keywords that align with your product and the searcher’s intent on a personal level and keeps them hooked to its specifications. You can use different keyword variations and create valuable phrases that emphasize the value of your product without making them repetitive. However, it’s recommended to keep your words concise and avoid overstuffing the description with unnecessary phrases.
You may blend creativity with optimization and craft a description that helps your product rank higher. Tell shoppers how your product can help them solve their specific issues and make a difference in their lives. Rather than emphasizing your product’s features, try to highlight its benefits so that shoppers are convinced to buy it from you, not your competitors.
A compelling product description acts as a sensory language, giving readers an idea of what the product will look like, how it works, and the benefits it offers to the user. It may contain information about the materials used in making the product, available variations, sizes, colors, dimensions, and measurements, warranty details, packaging size, included accessories (if any), care instructions, and technical specifications (if applicable). While your product description should be comprehensive, it should also be concise enough to avoid confusing the buyer or making them skip the product.
Add high-quality visuals to create impact
While the product title and description provide shoppers with information about the product and its specifications in text, they are not enough. Buyers still need visual content to get an idea of what the product will look like and how it will work. Most online shoppers in the UAE belong to the younger generation, who have a higher chance of conversions when presented with visual content. This is why it becomes even more essential to add real, original, precise, and high-quality photographs and videos of your product. The product visuals play a direct role in product listing optimization on e-commerce marketplaces, where the buyers cannot physically touch, feel or use the product and rely more on these images.
For electronic, equipment and accessories, it is mandatory to include demonstration videos that show how the product works, and highlight its interactive elements. Potential buyers of these products need to see how the product works, as they cannot touch or feel it at the moment. Thus, the video content helps them gain a complete understanding of how the product works, along with its visual details and assembly.
As we stated earlier, every marketplace works on a different algorithm; for some, the recommended visuals are 6 to 8, while for some, it could be fewer or more. Whatever marketplace you’re selling on, the pictures and videos you include in your product listings should be original and genuine, helping buyers get an accurate representation of the product. Not only do the product visuals help buyers perceive the product, but they also play a crucial role in optimization. Since the search engine for every marketplace reads the image alt text, don’t forget to add it and in a correct format. The alt text for the image should contain the primary keyword and accurately describe the image, such as ‘Electric Air Balloon Pump Pink’.
You may follow these helpful tips to create product visuals for an optimized product listing:
- Take the assistance of professional photographers while capturing product photographs, to get clear, high-quality, correctly focused images, having the right amount of light.
- Add shots of the product from multiple angles to give buyers a complete idea of what the product looks like.
- Try to include lifestyle photographs and videos of the product to show how it’s used.
- Ensure the image can be zoomed in and out without affecting its quality.
- Put the main product as the main image. Do not put accessories or secondary product images as the main image.
- The images you choose to add should not contain trademark infringement watermark or logo, as it negatively impacts the product’s impression.
- Consider adding a short, accessible, and informative video about the product’s interactivity and interface, as videos have a higher chance of convincing shoppers to make a purchase.
Display customer reviews on your product listing
Adding customer reviews to the product listings establishes the trustworthiness of your product. It tells potential customers what others are saying about your product and encourages them to purchase from you. With over 93% of online shoppers trusting reviews before making a purchase decision, it becomes pivotal to aim for positive reviews when selling on a marketplace.
When selling on an online marketplace, the reviews and ratings left by the shoppers are not under the seller’s control. Most marketplaces rank those product listings higher that have more reviews and higher ratings, as the reviews usually contain the phrases and keywords that targeted buyers use.
So, if you want your product to receive good reviews and a high rating score, you must ensure that you provide consumers with the best quality products and offer rapid and reliable customer service. You must promptly respond to customer complaints and constructively address negative comments. By offering excellent customer service, you can ensure positive feedback and mitigate negative responses.
Opt for a competitive pricing strategy
When selling on an e-commerce marketplace, you must think strategically when setting product prices. You may even shift your pricing strategies based on the market demand and value. It’s better to analyze your competitors’ prices to get an idea about the product pricing.
When selling on marketplaces, sellers can increase sales by packaging complementary items together and selling the bundle at a competitive price. Some marketplaces consider product pricing as a ranking factor. For instance, if your product is priced higher than similar products in the marketplace, its ranking may be affected. The pricing of your product is not just a number; you must strategize it intelligently so it generates more revenue.
One of the essential things to consider when pricing a product is the price sensitivity of different customer segments. You cannot price a product to appease the customer at the cost of losing your profit. By understanding how price-sensitive your targeted buyers are and how much they are willing to pay, you can price a product without compromising on your profit. You can create promotional offers and create a sense of urgency, encouraging buyers to make an instant purchase.
Since the e-commerce landscape is ever-evolving, you can’t stay stuck with the pricing of your product. You must conduct market research and review the sales trends of your product so that your product pricing remains competitive and your listing remains optimal.
Bottom line
Every marketplace has a specific algorithm that determines how products are ranked. By following the guidelines crafted by these marketplaces, you can create product listings that make a great impression. A comprehensive product listing serves as a strong foundation for your e-commerce business in the online marketplace and significantly determines its success. From mastering the art of keyword placement to creating compelling titles, descriptions, and visuals, there are multiple things you can do to make your product listings stand out.
If you plan to sell on an e-commerce marketplace and want your products to stand out, all you need to do is optimize your product listing. Numerous marketplaces in the UAE support small businesses and connect them with potential customers instantly. DeliverIt is one of the trusted platforms that facilitates sellers and startups in the UAE and helps them reach an established customer base. We offer multiple tools to the sellers that help them create well-optimized product listings that succeed in the UAE’s commerce landscape. Not only is DeliverIt popular for its rapidly expanding e-commerce platform, but it is also a reliable delivery service provider that you can count on for on-time deliveries to your customers’ doorsteps.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where can I optimize my product listings?
You can optimize your product listings wherever your products are, for instance, on your commerce website, e-commerce marketplaces where you sell, and your business app. Create comprehensive product listings that resonate with the search intent of your targeted audience and encourage them to buy from you.
What does it mean to optimize product listing on an e-commerce marketplace?
Optimizing your product listing on an e-commerce marketplace means improving its visibility and performance on the marketplace’s search engine results page. When a product listing is optimized, it may appear at the top whenever a potential buyer searches for it on the marketplace, hence increasing its click-through rates.
What is the difference between optimizing product listing for your webshop vs marketplace?
When optimizing product listings for your webshop, your goal is to attract search engine bots to your listings and get them ranked. You are concentrated on following the search engine, say Google’s algorithm, and once you attract potential buyers to your product page, you only focus on converting them into sales.
On the other hand, every marketplace has a different algorithm and set of rules a seller must follow to create their product listing. The goal is to get your listing to appear every time a searcher searches for a relevant keyword on the marketplace search engine. You must design your content around the specified guidelines for your product to improve its ranking.
